The parent is the important other person in the room!

Parents are dealing with a torture-like situation, when the child is ill.

Although it has not been explicitly mentioned up to now, but my main approach is to start the relation-therapy with the child. The child is my focus for connection, for respect and for engagement in the first place.

Why I focus on the child first?

I would expect from any adult to be able to wait. In many cases this assumption is proven right. The parents relax when they see their child relaxing.

When the examination is done, I provide the child with a toy (my favourite is either a simple wooden puzzle or a Rubik’s-cube) and next I switch my attention towards the parent for the medical history and the explanation. This would be the moment when the parents become more central to my focus.

This approach has proven effective for over 90% of parents, but there are exceptions.

“Common” unusual parental behaviours are:

• Parents acting overprotective
• Parents acting hostile
• Parents acting over demanding

Parents are dealing with a torture-like situation, when the child is ill.

What is the inner story-line of parents?

Every parents heart melts, when they see their child being ill. They want this changed, as quick as possible. The reason is, that to them the whole situation feels like torture!

And every parent in their right mind, would love to give either an arm or a leg, if this would change the suffering of their little one.

How would you react here?

We need to step into their shoes, to understand the reaction and sometimes overreaction of the parent.

In the next three blog-posts I will dig deeper into the setting with the specific parental mindsets.

In a nutshell:

Parents are dealing with a torture-like situation, when the child is ill.